Monday, August 27, 2012

"Tim Griffin should be in jail." That's the conclusion of civil rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after going through the evidence I asked him to review.

But Griffin's not in jail: he's in Congress. And Tuesday, he'll be the first Congressman the Republicans have chosen to bring to their convention podium.

Predictably, I haven't seen one US press report noting that in 2007, Griffin resigned from the Justice Department in disgrace, ahead of what could have been (should have been), his indictment.

Kennedy thought a couple of other characters should join Griffin in the lock-up: first, Griffin's boss, the man whom George W. Bush gave the nickname, "Turdblossom": Karl Rove.

And there's yet another odiferous blossom, Griffin's assistant at the time of the crime: Matt Rhoades. Rhoades isn't in jail either. He's the campaign director of presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Kennedy had gone over the highly confidential emails we'd gotten from inside Republican National Committee headquarters i Washington. (How we got our hands on private emails from the top dogs in the Republican campaign, well, that's another story. I can say, they were sent directly from the computer of Tim Griffin. Rove, a computer expert, is careful not to have his own).

“What they did was absolutely illegal—and they knew it and they did it anyway," Kennedy told me.

What they did was called voter "caging." The RNC sent letters by the thousands to soldiers, first class, marked, "DO NOT FORWARD." When the letters were returned undelivered, the Republicans planned to use these "caged" envelopes as evidence the voters were "fraudulent"--then challenge their ballot.

A soldier mailing in his or her vote from Iraq would have that ballot disqualified -- and the soldier wouldn't even know it.

That's not just sick, it's a crime, a violation of the Voting Rights Act drafted by Kennedy's late father. And it was a crime because of whom the RNC caging crew attacked: not just any soldiers, but soldiers of color.

Running a vote-challenge operation based on racial profiling is a go-to-jail felony.

And after the soldiers, the "Turdblossom" gang targeted students at traditionally Black schools (away on summer break), homeless men and a few precincts of Jewish voters. In other words, anyone whose politics was Blue-ish.

The emails were dated August 2004, just before the presidential election. "Caging" would cost Bush's opponent John Kerry more than one state. At the time, Rove was Senior Counselor to the President, Griffin head of "Research" at the RNC and his go-fer Rhoades director of Opposition [read "Smear"] Research.

But they did more. Rove and Griffin were up to their necks in the firing of federal prosecutors. One, the US Attorney for New Mexico, David Iglesias, told me the two illegal acts were tied together: Captain Iglesias (he's a Naval JAG), himself a Republican, said he was fired because he refused to go along with RNC demands that he arrest innocent citizens on fake charges of fraudulent registration. Iglesias was horrified at this Soviet-style tactic. "I thought I was a Jedi warrior, but it turns out I was with the Seth Lords."

So Rove had Bush fired him and seven other prosecutors, including Bud Cummins, US Attorney for Arkansas. In his place, Bush appointed ...Tim Griffin.

Things Go Better with Kochs

Griffin won't talk to me, nor will Rove nor Romney's man Rhoades about the racial caging game and the related firing of federal prosecutors.

But never mind: I have his personal emails and the testimony of Captain Iglesias. And that was enough, in 2007, for BBC to put the "caging" evidence and the real story of the prosecutor firing on the air.

By the next morning, Tim Griffin resigned his post at US Attorney for Arkansas. He was in tears.

But Tim's tears were soon wiped away -- by the Koch Brothers. In 2010, Koch interests dumped $167,183 into Tim Griffin's campaign for Congress. For $167,183, your average congressman will wash your car -- with their tongue.

Tim won the Little Rock seat, and here he is in Tampa. Despite the fact that he's an unknown freshman from an un-swing state, he's been given the extraordinary honor of speaking for the entire Republican Congressional delegation.

And now you know why: In Congress, he's Rove-bot Number One, owned and operated by Koch Industries.

Why would the Kochs do this for the disgraced Griffin? Answer: It's what Griffin does for them.

Among other favors, Griffin is the top cheerleader in the House for the XL Pipeline--whose approval is vital to the billionaire Kochs making more billions.

But wait! The Kochs don't own the XL Pipe nor the Canadian tar sands from which it comes. So why do they care?

Well, that's another story, in another chapter, "XXXL Pipeline" in Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal the Election in 9 Easy Steps, out September 18. The Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.

Astronomers have for the first time observed a nova-producing system turn into a supernova, a finding that indicates the universe has more than one way to create a nova. A normal Type Ia supernova is a rare event, occurring perhaps once or twice every century. The type of supernova observed by a team of astronomers led by astronomer Ben Dilday of UC Santa Barbara is estimated to occur about one time in every 1,000 supernovae. The findings are important because supernovae are generally all considered to have the same intrinsic brightness, making them what astronomers call "standard candles" used for estimating distances across the cosmos. If some supernovae have different brightnesses because they have a different origin, that could lead to errors in distance measurements.

The new supernova, called PTF 11kx, was discovered initially by the Palomar Transient Factory, which uses a robotic telescope on the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory to scan the sky nightly looking for sudden increases in light that indicate the presence of a supernova or nova. Peter Nugent of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory first observed PTF 11kx, which lies about 600 million light years away in the constellation Lynx, on Jan. 16, 2011. The signals were so unusual that Nugent and his Berkeley colleagues called for what is known as a "target of opportunity" observation with the Keck Telescope in Hawaii. "We basically called up a fellow UC observer and interrupted their observations in order to get time-critical spectra," Nugent said. The team has been observing the system regularly ever since. "For several months, almost every new observation showed something we had never seen before," Dilday said.

Indirect evidence has previously suggested that the majority of Type Ia supernovae arise from the collision of two white dwarf stars, producing a massive burst of light and energy. Regular novae, which produce far less energy, are produced from systems in which a white dwarf star -- essentially the corpse of a sun-like star -- orbits a red giant. Gas emitted from the red giant is captured by the white dwarf. When the gas builds up to a high enough concentration, a brilliant explosion occurs: a nova. The white dwarf then goes quiescent, accumulating more gas until another nova erupts, typically about 20 years later. Because the recurrent novae cause the white dwarf to lose more mass than is gained from the red giant, it was thought that such a dwarf could never accumulate enough to produce a supernova. But this system did, the team reported this week in the journal Science.

PTF 11kx is close enough to Earth that researchers could study it in more detail than most supernovae. The team observed that the system is surrounded by several shells of gas that were expanding outward at a rate too fast to be the result of solar wind, but too slow to have been caused by a supernova. Researchers have observed similar shells of gas around other stars, but have not been sure of their origin. The team now believes that they are the remnants of previous novae. The researchers reasoned that the expanding shells were slowing down as they encountered solar winds from the red giant star. If that were the case, the more energetic gases from the new supernova should catch up and collide with them.

When PTF 11kx went supernova, it produced a strong calcium signal, which is definitive of supernovae and partially how it was detected. As the team monitored the supernova, the calcium signal slowly subsided, as expected. Then, 58 days after the supernova was detected, the team once again received a strong calcium signal. The supernova's gases had, indeed, collided with the expanding shells, confirming the researchers' theory.

"Because we've looked at thousands of systems and PTF 11kx is the only one we've found that looks exactly like this, we think it is probably a rare phenomenon," said co-author Jeffrey Silverman of UC Berkeley. "However, these systems could be somewhat more common, and nature is just hiding their signal from us."

Gwenyth Todd had worked in a lot of places in Washington where powerful men didn’t hesitate to use sharp elbows. She had been a Middle East expert for the National Security Council in the Clinton administration. She had worked in the office of Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in the first Bush administration, where neoconservative hawks first began planning to overthrow Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

But she was not prepared a few years later in Bahrain when she encountered plans by high-ranking admirals to confront Iran, any one of which, she reckoned, could set the region on fire. It was 2007, and Todd, then 42, was a top political adviser to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.

Previous 5th Fleet commanders had resisted various ploys by Bush administration hawks to threaten the Tehran regime. But in spring 2007, a new commander arrived with an ambitious program to show the Iranians who was boss in the Persian Gulf.

Vice Adm. Kevin J. Cosgriff had amassed an impressive résumé, rising through the ranks to command a cruiser and a warship group after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Following a customary path to three stars, he had also spent as much time in Washington as he had at sea, including stints at the Defense Intelligence Agency and as director of the Clinton White House Situation Room.

Cosgriff — backed by a powerful friend and boss, U.S. Central Command (Centcom) chief Adm. William J. “Fox” Fallon — was itching to push the Iranians, Todd and other present and former Navy officials say.

“There was a feeling that the Navy was back on its heels in dealing with Iran,” according to a Navy official prohibited from commenting in the media. “There was an intention to be far more aggressive with the Iranians, and a diminished concern about keeping Washington in the loop.”

Two people who were there said Cosgriff mused in a staff meeting one day that he’d like to steam a Navy frigate up the Shatt al Arab, the diplomatically sensitive and economically crucial waterway dividing Iraq and Iran. In another, they said, he wanted to convene a regional conference to push back Iran’s territorial claims in the waterway, a flash point for the bloody Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

Then he presented an idea that not only alarmed Todd, but eventually, she believes, launched the chain of events that would end her career.

Cosgriff declined to discuss any of these meetings on the record. This story includes information from a half-dozen Navy and other government officials who demanded anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, many parts of which remain classified.

According to Todd and another witness, Cosgriff’s idea, presented in a series of staff meetings, was to sail three “big decks,” as aircraft carriers are known, through the Strait of Hormuz — to put a virtual armada, unannounced, on Iran’s doorstep. No advance notice, even to Saudi Arabia and other gulf allies. Not only that, they said, Cosgriff ordered his staff to keep the State Department in the dark, too.

To Todd, it was like something straight out of “Seven Days in May,” the 1964 political thriller about a right-wing U.S. military coup. A retired senior naval officer familiar with Cosgriff’s thinking said the deployment plan was not intended to be provocative.

But Todd, in an account backed by another Navy official, said the admiral “was very, very clear that we were to tell him if there was any sign that Washington was aware of it and asking questions.”

For the past year, the air had been electric with reports of impending U.S. or Israeli attacks on Iran. If this maneuver were carried out, Todd and others feared, the Iranians would freak out. At the least, they’d cancel a critical diplomatic meeting coming up with U.S. officials. Todd suspected that was Cosgriff’s aim. She and others also speculated that Cosgriff wouldn’t propose such a brazen plan without Fallon’s support.

Retired Adm. David C. Nichols, deputy Centcom commander in 2007, recalled in an interview last year that Fallon “wanted to do a freedom-of-navigation exercise in what Iran calls its territorial waters that we hadn’t done in a long time.” Nothing wrong with that, per se, but the problem was that “we don’t understand Iran’s perception of what we’re doing, and we haven’t understood what they’re doing and why,” Nichols said. “It makes miscalculations possible.”

Todd feared that the Iranians would respond, possibly by launching fast-attack missile boats into the gulf or unleashing Hezbollah on Israel. Then anything could happen: a collision, a jittery exchange of gunfire — bad enough on its own, but also an incident that Washington hawks could seize on to justify an all-out response on Iran.

Preposterous? It had happened before, off North Vietnam in 1964. In the Tonkin Gulf incident, a Navy captain claimed a communist attack on his ship. President Lyndon Johnson swiftly ordered the bombing of North Vietnam, touching off a wider war that turned the country upside down and left more than 58,000 U.S. servicemen dead.

Don’t tell anybody? No way.

Todd picked up the phone and called a friend in Foggy Bottom. She had to get this thing stopped.

A daily newspaper in Britain, The British Daily Star, reported UK has sent over 200 special troops inside Syria with further assistance from MI6, CIA and French-American Intelligence Services.

Those forces allegedly are operating in Syria in order to destroy what US and Western media label as weapons of mass destruction.

The Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad has given ample assurances to Russia, China and Iran that his country's vastly superior forces do not ever need to use those weapons against foreign-backed insurgency as they can be defeated using conventional means.

Troops of the Syrian Army have almost completely defeated the insurgency across the country and are working round the clock to confront the remaining pockets of terrorist activities with massive help from ordinary people.

Earlier Russia criticized Washington for its threat of direct military force against Syria. Moscow said it will accept a UNSC call for a direct military intervention in Syria from outside.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

People from all over El Dorado County say they’re hearing loud booms several times a week, but there are many theories on what is causing them.

“I thought it was thunder,” said one person.

“It’s definitely not thunder; too consistent. I thought it was just mining,” said another person.

“I always considered them to be sonic booms from flying aircrafts for years,” said Loring Brunius, owner of Sierra Rock Diamond Quarry.

People who live near Pleasant Valley say their days have been interrupted by loud booms, shaking the floor beneath them.

“You can feel it in the ground, no question about it. But no one’s been able to figure out why,” said Pleasant Valley resident Peter O’Grady. “I tend to hear somewhere between four to six of these things during the weekdays usually between 11 p.m. and 2 p.m.

“Boom, boom, boom, boom just like that,” said Lorren Gonzales, who lives near Pleasant Valley.

And the rolling foothills of El Dorado County make it difficult for them to even tell where it’s coming from.

We asked the owner of Sierra Rock Diamond Quarry what he knew about it. He says they havent blasted since last year. And any miners or quarry owners would need government permission before they can set off any explosives.

“It’s a federally mandated system, and enforced,” said Brunius.

Some think the booms are from nearby wineries using propane cannons to scare away birds.

“We’ve never done it and I don’t know of any other winery that does,” said Carrie Bendick, a winemaker at Holly’s Hill Winery.

According to USGS, there aren’t enough seismic stations to pinpoint the exact location. Meanwhile, some say the booms have been around so long and happen so often they barely notice them anymore. Still, others want to solve the mystery.

“I would like to know what it is, yeah. And I’d like to know when it’s going to stop too,” said O’Grady.

CBS13 spoke to Fallon Naval Air Station that said any supersonic flight operations they do are only allowed over Dixie Valley, which is hundreds of miles away.

Some think illegal mining could be the source of the sounds, but Brunius doubts that theory. He said if that was the case, the culprit would have been caught by now.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

All nine people wounded during a dramatic confrontation between police and a gunman outside the Empire State Building were struck by bullets fired by the two officers, police said Saturday, citing ballistics evidence.

The veteran patrolmen who opened fire on the suit-wearing gunman, Jeffrey Johnson, had only an instant to react when he whirled and pointed a .45-caliber pistol as they approached him from behind on a busy sidewalk.

The volley of gunfire felled Johnson in just a few seconds and left nine other people bleeding on the sidewalk.

In the initial chaos Friday, it wasn't clear whether Johnson or the officers were responsible for the trail of wounded, but based on ballistic and other evidence, "it appears that all nine of the victims were struck either by fragments or by bullets fired by police," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told reporters on Saturday at a community event in Harlem.

He reiterated that the officers appeared to have no choice but to shoot Johnson, whose body had 10 bullet wounds in the chest, arms and legs.

"I believe it was handled well," Kelly said.

The officers confronted Johnson as he walked, casually, down the street after gunning down a former co-worker on the sidewalk outside the office they once shared. The shooting happened at 9 a.m., as the neighborhood bustled with people arriving for work.

The gunman and his victim, Steve Ercolino, had a history of workplace squabbles before Johnson was laid off from their company, Hazan Import Corp., a year ago. At one point, the two men had grappled physically in an elevator.

John Koch, the property manager at the office building where the men worked, said security camera footage showed the two pushing and shoving. The tussle ended when Ercolino, a much larger man, pinned Johnson against the wall of the elevator by the throat, Koch said. Ercolino let him go after a few moments, and the two men went their separate ways.

"They didn't like each other," Koch said.

On Friday, Johnson shot Ercolino five times in the head and face, a medical examiner's spokeswoman said. After the shooting, Johnson, an eccentric T-shirt designer and avid bird-watcher who wore a suit every day, even when photographing hawks in Central Park, walked away as if nothing had happened.

Alerted by a construction worker, Officers Matthews and Sinishtaj gave chase as Johnson rounded a corner and walked along Fifth Avenue, in front of the landmark skyscraper.

A security videotape from the scene shows several civilians — including three sitting on a bench only a few feet away — scattering as the officers opened fire.

Police have determined that three people were struck by whole bullets — two of which were removed from victims at the hospital — and the rest were grazed "by fragments of some sort," Kelly said.

Three people remained hospitalized, all in stable condition, police said.

Both Matthews, 39, and Sinishtaj, 40, joined the nation's largest police department 15 years ago.

Matthews had drawn attention earlier this year by filing a lawsuit against the New York Police Department that accused his superiors of unfairly punishing him for not meeting arrest quotas. A judge threw out the complaint.

There was no immediate response to a message left with the union representing the two officers.

The shooting didn't deter tourists from flocking to the Empire State Building as usual on Saturday.

Patricia Flynn, 57, a retired schoolteacher, visited the building's peak with her elderly mother, who once worked in the skyscraper as a secretary.

"But I didn't tell her what happened," said Flynn, adding that her mother was unaware of Friday's shooting. "And she really enjoyed the view."

A group of 31 tourists from all over France held a meeting Friday night at their nearby hotel to decide whether to cancel their planned Empire State Building visit.

"We were scared, and we thought it was a risk," said Catherine Krukar, 38, a teacher.

But in the end, they went ahead with the visit, she said after descending from the observation tower,

"We know it can happen anywhere, and we wanted to see the Empire State Building," Krukar said. "It was beautiful!

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Accurately described as bigots and hooligans, the 3 member musical band known as “Pussy Riot” is now on trial for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” This came after they burst into a church in Moscow, disturbing the peace while mocking the beliefs of practitioners in an attempt to protest against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Had skinheads done something similar in a synagogue in the West, surely they’d have long ago paid steep fines and begun their lengthy jail sentences for “public insults based on origin, religious affiliation, race or ethnicity” (and here).

The Guardian’s article titled, “Pussy Riot trial ‘worse than Soviet era’,” opens immediately with overt propaganda, describing the courtroom and Russian flag as “shabby” and a police dog as “in search of blood.” The British paper attempts to portray Russia itself as having a “stark divide” between conservatives and liberals, the latter fighting against the state “with any means it can.”

Already the Guardian runs into trouble – by portraying Russia as “divided” it is dismissing recent elections that granted Vladimir Putin and his United Russia party a sound mandate to lead the country. And while it is true that in reality, between voter turnout and Putin’s garnering the support of 63% of those that did turn out (in a 5-way race), only about 40% of Russia’s total registered voters actually voted for Putin, his mandate is still sounder than that of US President Barack Obama’s 32% in a mere 2-way race, or last year’s victory here in Thailand by Yingluck Shinawatra with a tenuous 35%, a victory hailed by the Western media as a “sweeping” mandate.

It should also be noted that Russia’s recent elections were marred by election monitoring NGO “GOLOS” attempting to call the results fraudulent. It would be later revealed that this NGO, billed as “independent” by the Western press, was in fact funded and directed by the US State Department via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Attempts by Wall Street and London to frame the elections as fraudulent set the groundwork for a wider campaign of political destabilization – a campaign “Pussy Riot” has now become a key player in.

Tasteless PR Stunt the Work of the US State Department

The Guardian however is absolutely correct when they call the “Pussy Riot” proceedings a “show trial.” However, they are wrong in claiming that the showmanship is the work of the Russian Federation. Instead, it is showmanship put on by the Western media and the US State Department’s vast network of faux-NGOs.

The Guardian’s entire article is propaganda written with a literary rather than journalistic tone. The article itself cites the defendant’s lawyer whose comments form the very basis of the article’s title. And while the Guardian may prey successfully on the emotions of ill-informed, unsuspecting, but well-intentioned readers, it lets slip several telling clues as to who is really behind the showmanship.

According to the Guardian, the defense “tried to call 13 witness, including opposition leader Alexey Navalny.” Navalny, of course, is a longtime operative receiving both political and financial support from the West in efforts to undermine the Russian government and bring back the days of Wall Street and London’s unhindered plundering that marked the 1990′s.

Alexey Navalny was a Yale World Fellow and in his profile it states:

“Navalny spearheads legal challenges on behalf of minority shareholders in large Russian companies, including Gazprom, Bank VTB, Sberbank, Rosneft, Transneft, and Surgutneftegaz, through the Union of Minority Shareholders. He has successfully forced companies to disclose more information to their shareholders and has sued individual managers at several major corporations for allegedly corrupt practices. Navalny is also co-founder of the Democratic Alternative movement and was vice-chairman of the Moscow branch of the political party YABLOKO. In 2010, he launched RosPil, a public project funded by unprecedented fundraising in Russia. In 2011, Navalny started RosYama, which combats fraud in the road construction sector.”

The Democratic Alternative, also written DA!, is indeed a National Endowment for Democracy fund recipient, meaning that Alexey Navalny is an agent of US-funded sedition. And despite posing as a champion for “transparency,” Navalny is willfully hiding this from his followers. The US State Department itself reveals this as they list “youth movements” operating in Russia:

“DA!: Mariya Gaydar, daughter of former Prime Minister Yegor Gaydar, leads DA! (Democratic Alternative). She is ardent in her promotion of democracy, but realistic about the obstacles she faces. Gaydar said that DA! is focused on non-partisan activities designed to raise political awareness. She has received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, a fact she does not publicize for fear of appearing compromised by an American connection.”

Navalny was involved directly in founding a movement funded by the US government and to this day has the very people who funded DA! defending him throughout Western media. The mention of co-founder Mariya Gaydar is also revealing, as she has long collaborated, and occasionally has been arrested with, Ilya Yashin, yet another leader of a NED-funded Russian “activist” opposition group.

If “Pussy Riot’s” defense is calling up a documented agent of Western interests as a “witness,” one wonders under what context and to what degree Navalny, and by consequence, the National Endowment for Democracy, is involved with the defendants. Navalny admits that he is “acquainted” with one of the band members, but was not actually a “witness,” and rather would have testified in order to “defend law and justice.”

Clearly then, the defense’s attempts to include him in the trial were politically motivated, having nothing to do with either law or justice, and serves simply as a means to link “Pussy Riot” to the US State Department’s subversive opposition, many of whose leaders were caught filing into the US Embassy in Moscow earlier this year.

Also telling, is that Oksana Chelysheva – board member of the Finnish-Russian Civic Forum and a steering committee member of the NED, convicted criminal George Soros Open Society-funded FIDH, Open Society, Ford Foundation, Sigrid Rausing Trust-funded Front Line Defenders, and US State Department-run Amnesty International-affiliated EU-Russia Civil Society Forum – is heading “Pussy Riot’s” support campaign.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

US-led NATO forces armed, funded, trained, and even provided air support for Libyan terrorists emanating out of Libya’s eastern Cyrenaica region – most notably Benghazi which had served as the premier international terrorist recruiting ground in the world, according to the US Army’s Combating Terrorism Center, producing a percentage per capita of militants outstripping even that of Saudi Arabia.

Operating under the banner of the “Libyan Islamic Fighting Group” (LIFG), a US State Department,British Home Office, and United Nations-listed international terrorist organization, and officially merged with Al Qaeda in 2007, its commanders including Abdul Hakim Belhaj and Mahdi al-Harati led NATO’s military proxy forces on the ground as US, French, and British planes destroyed the nation from the air.

These very same commanders of this very same listed-terrorist organization would then turn its cash, weapons, and fighters on Syria, as early as November 2011, arriving on the Turkish-Syrian border to enjoy yet another NATO safe haven and logistical networks overseen by Western intelligence along with US funding and arms laundered through Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) members such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

In essence, just as Al Qaeda had served as an “Arab Foreign Legion” for the US in Afghanistan in the 1980′s during its inception, it once again is serving as a foreign legion inside Syria, fighting Washington’s proxy war against the Syrian government.

Coordinated attempts by NATO and its proxy forces to invade and overrun the cities of Damascus and Aleppo in July and early August have failed, with proxy forces being expelled after suffering sizable loses. An attempt to decapitate Syria’s leadership in a bombing in central Damascus also fell flat, with high ranking officials quickly replaced, followed quickly by a cohesive military counter offensive.

The bombing was also followed by the mysterious disappearance of Saudi Arabia’s Bandar “Bush” Bin Sultan, who if confirmed assassinated, may indicate that NATO’s plans are suffering at even the highest levels of organization.

Compounding the West’s attempts to overthrow the government of Syria, is the increasing support Syria has been receiving due to Iranian efforts to assemble international forums representing half of the world’s population, condemning the support of foreign interference and promoting alternatives to the violent destabilization being carried out by the West. A 30 member conference was held ahead of the annual Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) meeting in Tehran, Iran – and another meeting will be held again on the sidelines of NAM toward the end of August.

With the tactical situation inside Syria deteriorating for Western proxies and international consensus shifting in unprecedented directions against Washington and London, shareholders in the West’s latest adventure appear to be making tacit moves to divest their support and protect their own interests, lest they be left with the ignominious results of an increasingly compounding failure.

Obama’s Recent Threats

With this in mind, the US has been making increasingly unhinged “Bush-esque” remarks regarding “weapons of mass destruction” in Syria and attempting to expand the pretexts under which it could “militarily intervene.” Even the very “movement” of Syria’s “unconventional weapons” in a “threatening manner,” US President Barack Obama claimed in a recent statement, would constitute a “red line.”

Obama claims that the US “fears” Syria’s unconventional weapons ”falling into the hands of the wrong people.” If the US is willfully arming, funding, and threatening to back militarily, listed Al Qaeda terrorist organizations, then whose hands is the US referring to? And while the US struggles to foment victory in Syria, it seems to have stretched its support for terrorism all the way to Russia’s Caucasus Mountains, reigniting violence there, linked to Al Qaeda as well.

To say that the US is overstretched is an understatement. It is overstretched politically, economically, and tactically. It risks a historically unprecedented collapse that would destroy all shareholders invested in its increasingly unhinged and transparently illegitimate ambitions. Nations, in particular GCC members, are beginning to realize with acute alarm that their support of Washington’s agenda is now threatening their very self-preservation. A victory even at this point would still likely be Pyrrhic.

No matter how well Syria goes for the West from this point on, the mechanisms it has used to get here, including its “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine, the legitimacy of the UN, the West’s so-called commitment to “human rights,” and the narrative of the so-called “War on Terror” have been undermined beyond salvage.

One can only imagine the mountains Washington is promising to move in order to keep its allies lined up behind them, particularly the ruling governments of Turkey and the GCC. For an elitist clique that has prided itself in “realist” political discourse, it has become increasingly surrealist. Whether or not Washington’s allies mirror this surrealism all the way to their own demise, remains to be seen.

In a court case glossed over by the corporate media earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit has ruled that individual segregated bank accounts may be turned into the property of a third-party under circumstances of duress.

“In other words, if a financial institution fails, clients, depositors and pension funds may not get some or all of their money back in a bankruptcy,” writes Dominique de Leveling de Bailleul for Beacon Equity Research.

The Sentinel ruling has legalized the theft of segregated customer funds and pensions by large banks and financial institutions.

Moreover, the ruling overrides protection afforded by Federal Deposit Insurance and other government insurance programs and leaves “millions of investors, depositors and retirees unaware that they are no longer account holders of their own funds, per se, but, instead, have suddenly become stockholders of the institution with which they have deposited their money,” de Leveling de Bailleu writes.

Ann Barnhardt points out that the ruling sets the stage for bankster consolidation ahead of an economic collapse.

Barnhardt writes on her blog that “all customer funds in the United States are now the legal property of JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs” and other mega-banks and financial institutions.

“Sentinel took customer segregated money and fraudulently used it as the collateral on a loan from Bank of New York Mellon for $312 million to fund their own in-house proprietary trading operations. When the Sentinel Ponzi collapsed, BNYM sued to go to the front of the line of creditors – ahead of the customers of Sentinel whose money was fraudulently used as collateral, which has now been ‘linguistically sanitized’ into the word ‘hypothecated,’” she writes.

“What this means is that even if Jon Corzine is somehow dragged into court by private citizens, because you know damn good and well that the Justice Department will never, ever touch him.”

Corzine is so confident of his fate, he has decided to launch a hedge fund.

“Insurance is designed to cover discreet, individual catastrophes. Okay? If one bank fails, the FDIC can come in and backstop that one bank, no problem,” Barnhardt explains.

“What do you think is going to happen if the entire system collapses? What happens, do you think, if, even, let’s say 25 percent of the banks or the banking capacity in the United States fails? We are now talking trillions and trillions of dollars in deposits.”

Barnhardt places blame in part for the coming economic catastrophe on the American people because they have voted into office psychopaths who protect bankster psychopaths.

“The perfection of the correlation to the psychopaths running the government and financial sector is hard to improve upon. They have ZERO remorse. They are not sorry, but disgusted and indignant that they were caught, and that society has the gall to hold them to any account,” she notes.

A data dump of government documents secured via the Freedom of Information Act shows that the roll out of domestic unmanned drones will, for the most part, be focused solely on the mass surveillance of the American people.

The documents, from the Federal Aviation Administration, were recently made public by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Among the documents are never-before-released Special Airworthiness Certificates (SACs) detailing which private companies have been granted permission to operate drones in US skies.

The EFF notes that the vast majority of drones are being used purely for surveillance purposes:

With some exceptions, drone flights in the U.S. have been all about developing and testing surveillance technology. TheNorth Little Rock Police Department, for instance, wrote that their SR30 helicopter-type drone “can carry day zoom cameras, infrared cameras, or both simultaneously.”

The Miami-Dade Police Department and Texas Department of Public Safety have employed drones capable of both daytime and nighttime video cameras, and according to the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Certificate of Authorization (COA) paperwork, their drone was to be employed in support of “critical law enforcement operations.”

However, the FAA didn’t just rubber stamp all drone requests. For example, the Ogden Police Departmentwanted to use its “nocturnal surveillance airship [aka blimp] . . . for law enforcement surveillance of high crime areas of Ogden City.” The FAA disapproved the request, finding Odgen’s proposed use “presents an unacceptable high risk to the National Airspace System (NAS).”

The unmanned aerial vehicle industry has attempted to lobby the government using all kind of platforms, suggesting that drones can be used for monitoring environmental changes or the effects of natural disasters.

However, the FAA documents conclusively show, if there was any doubt before, that monitoring the activities of everyday Americans is the number one priority.

As we reported last week, thousands more pages of FAA experimental drone flight records that were obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) detail just how complicated and risky it would be to operate thousands of unmanned arial vehicles safely without spending billions of dollars.

Manufacturers of drones, almost exclusively defense contractors, have spent $2.3 million so far on lobbying Congress to open up US airspace.

The Tampa Police Department will deploy dozens of ‘behavior recognition’ surveillance cameras at the Republican National Convention later this month, with the cameras remaining in place and more being added after the event finishes.

“The police department in Tampa, FL, is deploying behavioral recognition software from BRS Labs on dozens of the video cameras that will provide round-the-clock surveillance at many of the venues where the GOP national convention will take place August 27-30,” reports Government Security News.

The cameras work by using a software program called AISight 3.0, which is pre-programmed to acknowledge what behaviors are considered “normal” and then report any “suspicious activity” if it is spotted to police headquarters.

Equipped with the ability to track up to 150 suspects at a time, the cameras build up a “memory” of suspicious behavior to determine what constitutes potential criminal activity.

Critics have labeled the surveillance system one step away from “pre-crime,” the technology inextricably linked with the 2002 science fiction film Minority Report starring Tom Cruise, based on the short story by Philip K. Dick. The movie depicts a ruthless police state that employs psychics called “precogs” to apprehend criminals before crimes occur.

However, instead of being removed after the RNC concludes, more behavior recognition cameras will be added to keep tabs on the general public. BRS Labs president John Frazzini told GSN that once the convention is over, Tampa police will continue to deploy the technology “in an expanded footprint.”

This again emphasizes how invasive surveillance technologies are justified under the pretext of “national security events” and yet once the event is over, another permanent lurch towards an Orwellian society has been accomplished.

Although Frazzini refused to confirm whether the cameras would also be used at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC, “Frazzini did point out nonetheless that he was standing in a parking lot in Charlotte, NC, while conducting the telephone interview with GSN,” meaning the same system will almost certainly be in operation at the DNC.

Preparations for the RNC in Tampa as a “national security event” have been long in the making. As we reported back in July, garbage collectors have been trained to spot terrorists and other suspicious activity on their routes as part of a program dubbed ‘Waste Watch’.

Authorities are increasingly turning to pre-crime methods of surveillance in order to reduce the need for human intelligence and eliminate the requirement for camera footage to be watched by employees in real time.

BRS Labs recently announced that a total of 288 ‘pre-crime’ cameras will be installed across 12 transport hubs in San Francisco.

Law enforcement agencies in Washington D.C. are already using a software database developed by the University of Pennsylvania that they claim can predict when crimes will be committed and who will commit them, before they actually happen.

Other forms of pre-crime technology in use or under development include neurological brain scanners that can read people’s intentions before they act, thus detecting whether or not a person has “hostile intent”.

Pre-crime technology is also being rolled out in airports and other public venues in order to identify suspect travelers and single them out for interrogations. This face-scanning system “successfully discriminates between truth and lies in about two-thirds of cases,” which equates to little more accuracy than chance alone, making it even less reliable than the notorious polygraph test, which has been widely discredited and is habitually inaccurate.

As we have previously documented, the Department of Homeland Security’s FAST program is based around similar technology that professes to detect “malintent” by means of pre-crime interrogations and physiological scans.

In a scene that brought with it echoes of the Los Angeles Police Department's most infamous moment, residents filmed four officers holding down and punching a young man picked up outside his home for allegedly skateboarding on the wrong side of the street.

According to KTLA-TV, a protest is being planned for Monday in support of 19-year-old Ronald Weekley Jr. after the beating was captured on a cell phone Saturday.

"If you see the videotape, there are about three or four officers on top of my son," Weekley's father, Ronald Weekley Sr., said. "Then an officer comes into view, gets down on the ground and hits him in his face, and that's something you can hear on the tape. The results are, is that he has a broken nose, he has a broken cheekbone and he has a concussion."

Weekley was cited with resisting arrest.

The footage aired by KTLA shows two officers holding the younger Weekley down and another punching him in the face. A fourth officer standing atop the fray can be seen speaking into his radio. Another officer enters the frame seemingly ordering the unidentified resident filming the incident to move away. It is reminiscent of the seminal video of the traffic stop that propelled Rodney King into the national consciousness.

"I was like screaming because I thought they were going to kill him," one witness said of the police's treatment of Weekley.

Monday, August 20, 2012

Dallas County, Texas, and several nearby towns and cities in the Dallas area are currently being forcibly sprayed with toxic insecticides as part of a government effort to supposedly eradicate mosquitoes that may be carriers of West Nile virus (WNv). The mass sprayings, which are ramping up all across the country, involve blanketing entire areas with chemicals sprayed via airplanes, a highly controversial protocol that threatens not only all other insects and animals exposed, but also humans.

According to the City of Dallas, more than 380 state-confirmed cases of WNv have been reported throughout Texas this year, and at least 16 people in the Lone Star State have died in conjunction with the virus. The specifics of these cases and deaths have not been publicly released, but authorities insist that the situation is serious enough to warrant a series of at least three conjunctive aerial sprayings throughout Dallas County, including in Highland Park and University Park.

Aerial spraying chemicals linked to causing Colony Collapse Disorder

The chemical product being sprayed is known as Duet, an "advanced dual-action mosquito adulticide" that contains both sumithrin, the active ingredient in another mosquito pesticide known as Anvil, and prallethrin. Both chemicals are known to be highly-toxic neuropoisons that target not only mosquitoes, but also bees, bats, fish, crickets, and various other animals and insects (http://www.clarke.com/images/pdf/MSDS/2012MSDS/duet-msds.pdf).

Sumithrin, a synthetic pyrethroid, is known to kill bees, and is linked to the widespread bee die-off phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). In tests, sumithrin has been shown to damage human kidneys and the liver, and is also linked to causing both liver and breast cancers. Household pets exposed to sumithrin are also at risk of serious health complications, as are fish and other aquatic animals (http://www.pesticide.org).

Prallethrin, another synthetic pyrethroid, is hardly any better. A 1993 study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives suggests that prallethrin is a human endocrine disruptor. And like sumithrin, prallethrin is highly toxic to bees and other creatures besides just mosquitoes, threatening to very seriously disrupt the natural ecosystem of areas sprayed with it (http://www.pesticideinfo.org/Detail_Chemical.jsp?Rec_Id=PC35755).

Trust us, we're from the government

Despite all this, officials continue to publicly insist that the spraying chemicals, the details of which are not being openly disclosed, are harmless to humans, though there is no legitimate scientific evidence to back this claim. Instead, residents are simply being told that the sprayings are safe and necessary -- and many local residents seem content with this, having little or no concern about the harmful consequences of exposure.

In a recent photo published by the San Francisco Gate, for instance, local residents can be seen enjoying themselves on an outside patio at a local Dallas bar while spraying planes bombard them with chemicals overhead. As you will notice, these individuals appear to be amused by the large, toxic plumes in the sky (http://www.sfgate.com).

The same report explains that many local residents have been largely "unfazed" by the sprayings, and even the warnings to stay indoors while they are taking place. Many local residents have reportedly continued on with their normal routines despite the sprayings, including jogging on outside trails and engaging in other outdoor activities (http://www.sfgate.com).

Meanwhile, cities in Illinois (http://www.suntimes.com), California (http://www.nctimes.com), Massachusetts (http://www.boston.com), Pennsylvania (http://salisbury.patch.com), and elsewhere are also conducting their own aerial sprayings for WNv at the recommendation of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Contrary to the reassurances of public officials, there is also no evidence that aerial spraying chemicals are safe for humans. A Center for Public Integrity review of data compiled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows that pyrethrin chemicals can cause severe reactions in many people, and may be responsible for injuring and killing far more people than they theoretically save from dying of WNv.

"Both peer-reviewed scientific research and mathematical modeling demonstrate that spraying is ineffective for WNv," says a recent report by California Progress Report. "A model widely used for infectious diseases produced two important conclusions when applied to WNv transmission: 1) early, sufficient treatment for mosquito larvae is the key to control; 2) treatment aimed at adults later in the season cannot possibly eradicate the virus."

Another bizarre piece of eyewitness testimony has emerged out of the Aurora massacre, with a woman claiming that an alarm was repeatedly played shortly after the shooting began announcing “murder in the theater”.

Speaking to the Denver Post, Salina Jordan, who was situated in the theater next door to where the shootings took place, stated, “15-20 minutes into the movie that’s when you start hearing the….gunshots, the bullets start coming over into my theater and about six people got shot.”

“Five minutes after the guy comes running in and tells them that they’re shooting outside, you hear the alarm go off, it says ‘murder in the theater’ – like it’s just going off ‘murder in the theater’, ‘murder in the theater’ – it’s crazy that they got an alarm saying that there’s murder in the theater,” she added.

Why the cinema would have a pre-recorded alarm that sounded the words “murder in the theater” is both baffling and disturbing. Any emergency alarm would surely be expected to use generic words and not make reference to “murder,” which would only panic people more.

In a related story, a nurse who “saw everything” while treating victims of the shooting at the University of Colorado Hospital (UCH), drowned on August 7 while swimming in Okoboji Lake, Iowa, after being reported missing by her family.

46-year-old Jenny Gallagher was pictured with President Obama and praised for her “extraordinary efforts” in helping to save lives of injured victims.

Bloggers have raised questions about the circumstances surrounding Gallagher’s death and the case remains under investigation by the Dickinson County Sheriff’s Office.

At the very least, the full story behind the Aurora massacre has not been told. Police audio, eyewitness testimony and other material evidence clearly suggests that alleged Colorado shooter James Holmes had an accomplice.

Eyewitnesses described two shooters, noting that one of the gas canisters was thrown from the opposite side of the theater to where the killer was standing. Eyewitnesses also described the killer talking on a cellphone before the shooting and then standing in the emergency exit and beckoning someone else over.

More than an hour after Holmes was detained, police officers were still hunting additional suspects, having been told by eyewitnesses that there was more than one shooter.

At 1:16am on the police audio recording from the scene, an officer states, “Talking to people making statements, sounds like we have possibly 2 shooters, one that was in Theater 8 seated, another one that came in from the outside into Theater 9. Sounds like it was a coordinated attack.”

“Every unit, possible 2nd shooter still at large… Keep the media away from them,” said another officer.

A second gas mask different to the one Holmes was wearing was also found hundreds of feet from where Holmes was arrested at the opposite end of the theater car park, along with additional items.

Other questions surrounding the circumstances behind the attack remain unanswered, such as why Holmes went to the effort to booby-trapping his apartment with sophisticated explosives yet told the police about them immediately after his arrest.

Holmes’ behavior in court appearances since the massacre strongly suggests he is being drugged. The alleged shooter has repeatedly told prison officials he cannot remember playing any role in the shootings.

Last week, Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine was subjected to a smear campaign by the media for questioning the official narrative behind both the ‘Batman’ massacre and the Sikh temple shooting.

According to newly released documents by the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library, former Californian democratic senator George Smathers proposed an Operation Northwoods style false flag attack on Gitmo to then Massachusetts senator Kennedy. The Guardian reports Kennedy and Smathers were seriously entertaining the possibility of assassinating Fidel Castro. Kennedy was obviously against the entire idea. Smathers went on to propose the option of bombing American troops to provide an excuse for military intervention in Cuba. Significant about Smather’s confessions is the now apparent fact that the idea of bombing the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay was obviously floating in political circles as well as military ones some time before the actual formalization of the false flag proposals in the Operation Northwoods documents, ultimately rejected by President Kennedy in 1962. The other significant aspect of the confession by Smathers is that the proposals described within Northwoods in March of 1962 literally reflects the false flag proposal submitted to Kennedy in 1960 by senator Smathers.

In the freshly released documents by the JFK Memorial Library, Smathers- who frequently joined John F. Kennedy on trips to the south- admits that he proposed the idea of a false flag attack on Gitmo during a conversation with the President-to-be. When the assassination idea was discarded Mr Smathers suggested provoking an incident at the US Naval base at Guantanamo Bay on the eastern tip of Cuba as a pretext for a US invasion. Smathers:

“I did talk to him about a plan of having a false attack made on Guantanamo Bay which would give us the excuse of actually fomenting a fight which would then give us the excuse to go in and do the job. He asked me to write him something about it. And I think I did.”

As noted this very proposal by Smathers in 1960 is stunningly similar to the infamous Northwoods document, signed by chairman Lyman Lemnitzer, in which the Joint Chiefs of Staff propose some pretty criminal things, among which the one proposed by Smathers to Kennedy in 1960. Under “Incidents to establish a credible attack” the Joint Chiefs came up with the following proposals in regards to the US naval base at Gitmo:

1- Start rumors (many). Use clandestine radio.

2- Land friendly Cubans in uniform “over-the-fence” to stage attack on base.

3- Capture Cuban (friendly) saboteurs inside the base.

4- Start riots near the base main gate (friendly Cubans).

5- Blow up ammunition inside the base; start fires.

6- Burn aircraft on air base (sabotage).

7- Lob mortar shells from outside of base into base. Some damage to installations.

8- Capture assault teams approaching from the sea or vicinity of Guantanamo City.

In a February 2 1962 memorandum titled “Possible Actions to Provoke, Harass or Disrupt Cuba,” written by Gen. William H. Craig and submitted to Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale, the commander of the Operation Mongoose project outlines Operation Bingo- a plan to “create an incident which has the appearance of an attack on U.S. facilities (GMO) in Cuba, thus providing an excuse for use of U.S. military might to overthrow the current government of Cuba.”

In the context of Operation Mongoose, a highly classified US military operation, the refusal of Kennedy to put his signature under the before mentioned proposals is especially significant. According to countless sources from inside and outside the American intelligence communities, Mongoose was the infrastructure under which the assassination of Kennedy in ’63 has been carried out. Mongoose was in fact one of the largest covert operations ever conducted in the United States. It involved universities, military bases, individuals, businesses and government agencies- all neatly compartmentalized, of course.

Later, just about the time the Joint Chiefs of Staff submitted their operation Northwoods document to the President, Smathers recalled Kennedy telling him:

“George, I’d love to have you over … but I want you to do me a favour. I’d like to visit with you, I want to discuss things with you but I don’t want you to talk to me anymore about Cuba.”

Smathers said he didn’t bring it up again until the President invited him to an informal dinner some time after:

“I remember the President was actually fixing our own dinner and I raised the question of Cuba and what could be done and so on,” he related. “And I remember that he took his fork and just hit his plate and it cracked and he said, ‘Now, dammit, I wish you wouldn’t do that. Let’s quit talking about this subject.”

The revealing aspects of the Smathers confessions released by the JFK Memorial Library can hardly be overestimated. By the time Kennedy was presented with Operation Nortwoods, he must have recognized the striking similarities to the Gitmo false flag proposal by Smathers. And just like in 1960, he firmly rejected the plans.

If the actions of Lord Jacob Rothschild are anything to go by, the long predicted collapse of the Euro may not be far away, with the banking titan placing a $200 million dollar bet against the troubled single currency.

“Lord Rothschild, an elder member of the dynastic Rothschild banking family, has taken the position against the euro through RIT Capital Partners, the 1.9 billion pound investment trust of which he is executive chairman,” reports CNBC.

RIT has upped its short against the Euro from 3 per cent in January to 7 per cent in July.

The European Central Bank continues to try to re-animate a dead corpse by continually pumping bailout money into debt-ridden countries like Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain.

However, top investors only see it as a matter of time before the single currency is consigned to the landfill of economic history.

Last week, influential German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that “Banks, companies and investors are preparing themselves for a collapse of the euro.”

Meanwhile, billionaires like John Paulson and George Soros are throwing their financial muscle behind gold as the financial picture looks increasingly unstable heading towards the end of the year.

The next leg of the financial collapse is being forecast by many to be far greater in severity than the 2008 downturn, with Max Keiser appearing on the Alex Jones Show Friday to predict a systemic economic meltdown before April 2013.

“There is no way to stop it because systems analysis tells me that when you complicate a system to the degree that this has been compromised and complicated there’s a 99.9 per cent probability of a total utter systemic collapse before April (2013),” said Keiser.

He followed up by stating, “There is only one possible outcome from that and that’s civil war – there’s gotta be a civil war – it’s gonna be a civil war in America intergenerational – all the people under 30 are going to go to war with everybody who’s 45-plus who basically stole all their money, stole their country, stole their wealth….if you have one you’re gonna have the other and that would come in 2013.”

A drug addict in Blackpool, UK, died from an anthrax infection, sparking concerns of a pan-European outbreak of the rare disease.

­Medical experts suggested that the death was caused by contaminated heroin, Reuters reported. The incident comes in the wake of similar anthrax outbreaks in Europe. The Blackpool infection is the only fatal case thus far.

Since June, three incidents were recorded in Germany, two in Denmark and one in France. A heroin addict was also hospitalized in Scotland a month ago.

“It's likely that further cases among PWID [People Who Inject Drugs] will be identified as part of the ongoing outbreak in EU countries. The Department of Health has alerted the NHS of the possibility of people who are injecting drugs presenting to emergency departments and walk-in clinics, with symptoms suggestive of anthrax” Dilys Morgan, an expert at the UK Health Protection Agency (HPA) told the Guardian.

Anthrax is an infectious disease caused by the Bacillus anthracis bacteria. Infection in humans is rare, usually involving the skin, gastrointestinal tract or lungs. Anthrax commonly affects animals such as sheep and goats, but humans who come into contact with infected cattle may also become infected. People traditionally considered to be at high risk of anthrax infection include farm workers and veterinarians.

Since 2009, drug users have also come into contact with the deadly bacteria. A wave of 124 anthrax infections swept the UK in 2009 and 2010, resulting in 19 deaths. Scientists traced the outbreak to an infected goat in Turkey, which was used to transport heroin to Europe. There are fears that the batch responsible for the current incidents could be linked with the 2009-2010 cases, Wired magazine reported.

The UK healthcare system has responded to the potential threat by posting public warnings, and increasing national educational programs that explain the dangers of the rare bacteria and drug use.

The disease, which has a death rate of up to 75 percent once contracted, “can be cured with antibiotics, if treatment is started early. It is, therefore, important for medical professionals to know the signs and symptoms to look for, so that there are no delays in providing the necessary treatment," Morgan said.

The man who gave the Black Panther Party some of its first firearms and weapons training - which preceded fatal shootouts with Oakland police in the turbulent 1960s - was an undercover FBI informer, according to a former bureau agent and an FBI report.

One of the Bay Area's most prominent radical activists of the era, Richard Masato Aoki was known as a fierce militant who touted his street-fighting abilities. He was a member of several radical groups before joining and arming the Panthers, whose members received international notoriety for brandishing weapons during patrols of the Oakland police and a protest at the state Capitol.

Aoki went on to work for 25 years as a teacher, counselor and administrator at the Peralta Community College District, and after his suicide in 2009, he was revered as a fearless radical.

But unbeknownst to his fellow activists, Aoki had served as an FBI intelligence informant, covertly filing reports on a wide range of Bay Area political groups, according to the bureau agent who recruited him.

That agent, Burney Threadgill Jr., recalled that he approached Aoki in the late 1950s, about the time Aoki was graduating from Berkeley High School. He asked Aoki if he would join left-wing groups and report to the FBI.

"He was my informant. I developed him," Threadgill said in an interview. "He was one of the best sources we had."

The former agent said he asked Aoki how he felt about the Soviet Union, and the young man replied that he had no interest in communism.

"I said, 'Well, why don't you just go to some of the meetings and tell me who's there and what they talked about?' Very pleasant little guy. He always wore dark glasses," Threadgill recalled.

Book details role

Aoki's work for the FBI, which has never been reported, was uncovered and verified during research for the book by this reporter, "Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power." The book, based on research spanning three decades, will be published Tuesday by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

In 2007, two years before he committed suicide, Aoki was asked in a tape-recorded interview for the book if he had been an FBI informant. Aoki's first response was a long silence. He then replied, " 'Oh,' is all I can say."

Later during the same interview, Aoki contended the information wasn't true.

Asked if this reporter was mistaken that Aoki had been an informant, Aoki said, "I think you are," but added: "People change. It is complex. Layer upon layer."

FBI code number

The FBI later released records about Aoki in response to a federal Freedom of Information Act request made by this reporter. A Nov. 16, 1967, intelligence report on the Black Panthers lists Aoki as an "informant" with the code number "T-2."

An FBI spokesman declined to comment on Aoki, citing litigation seeking additional records about him under the Freedom of Information Act.

Since Aoki shot himself at his Berkeley home after a long illness, his legend has grown. In a 2009 feature-length documentary film, "Aoki," and a 2012 biography, "Samurai Among Panthers," he is portrayed as a militant radical leader. Neither mentions that he had worked with the FBI.

Harvey Dong, who was a fellow activist and close friend, said last week that he had never heard that Aoki was an informant.

"It's definitely something that is shocking to hear," said Dong, who was the executor of Aoki's estate. "I mean, that's a big surprise to me."

Finding the informant

Threadgill recalled that he first approached Aoki after a bureau wiretap on the home phone of Saul and Billie Wachter, local members of the Communist Party, picked up Aoki talking to Berkeley High classmate Doug Wachter.

At first, Aoki gathered information about the Communist Party, Threadgill said. But Aoki soon focused on the Socialist Workers Party and its youth affiliate, the Young Socialist Alliance, which also were targets of an intensive FBI domestic security investigation.

By spring 1962, Aoki had been elected to the Berkeley Young Socialist Alliance's executive council, FBI records show. That December, he became a member of the Oakland-Berkeley branch of the Socialist Workers Party, where he served as the representative to Bay Area civil rights groups. He also was on the steering committee of the Committee to Uphold the Right to Travel, which worked to give students the right to travel to Cuba. In 1965, Aoki joined the Vietnam Day Committee, an influential antiwar group based in Berkeley, and worked on its international committee as liaison to foreign antiwar activists.

"I'd call him and say, 'When do you want to get together?' " Threadgill recalled. "I'd say, 'I'll meet you on the street corner at so-and-so and so on.' I would park a couple of blocks away and get out and go and sit down and talk to him."

'He had guns'

Threadgill worked with Aoki through mid-1965, when he moved to another FBI office and turned Aoki over to a fellow agent.

Aoki gave the Panthers some of their first guns. As Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale recalled in his memoir, "Seize the Time," the group approached Aoki, "a Third World brother we knew, a Japanese radical cat. He had guns ... .357 Magnums, 22's, 9mm's, what have you."

In early 1967, Aoki joined the Black Panther Party and gave them more guns, Seale wrote. Aoki also gave Panther recruits weapons training, he said in the 2007 interview.

Although carrying weapons was legal at the time, there is little doubt their presence contributed to fatal confrontations between the Panthers and the police.

Deadly shootouts

On Oct. 28, 1967, Black Panthers co-founder Huey Newton was in a shootout that wounded Oakland Officer Herbert Heanes and killed Officer John Frey. On April 6, 1968, Eldridge Cleaver and five other Panthers were involved in a firefight with Oakland police. Cleaver and two officers were wounded, and Panther Bobby Hutton was killed.

M. Wesley Swearingen, a retired FBI agent who has criticized unlawful bureau surveillance activities under Director J. Edgar Hoover, reviewed some of the FBI's records. He concluded in a sworn declaration that Aoki had been an informant.

"I believe that Aoki was an informant," said Swearingen, who served in the FBI from 1951 to 1977 and worked on a squad that investigated the Panthers.

"Someone like Aoki is perfect to be in a Black Panther Party, because I understand he is Japanese," he added. "Hey, nobody is going to guess - he's in the Black Panther Party; nobody is going to guess that he might be an informant."

In 1979, when the founder of the Islamic Republic Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini instructed revolutionary students to “capture the ‘Den of Espionage,’” the US embassy in Tehran, the United States and its allies responded by calling the act a violation of the Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic Relations and Consular Affairs.

In 2012, the United Kingdom issued a démarche to the embassy of Ecuador in London, threatening to invoke the 1987 Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act to temporarily revoke the extraterritoriality and diplomatic immunity of the Ecuadorian embassy to seize WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange and extradite him to Sweden to face sexual assault charges. WikiLeaks, which obtained over 250,000 secret and below US State Department cables, has seen a bloc of Western intelligence-sharing allies marshal their forces to deliver Assange to the United States to stand trial, along with US Army Private First Class Bradley Manning, for leaking the cables to the press.

The Sydney Morning Herald has reported that Australia’s two intelligence agencies, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), which gathers foreign intelligence, and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), which gathers domestic intelligence, have briefed their American counterparts, as well as the former and current Prime Ministers, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard on the possible extradition of Assange to the United States from Sweden.

Britain’s eagerness to violate the diplomatic sanctity of the Ecuadorian embassy has some members of Western intelligence services concerned. If Britain establishes a precedent by violating Articles 22 and 31 of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which respectively state that the host country may not enter the embassy or consular premises, and must protect the premises from intrusion or damage, the allied intelligence agencies of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand fear that some nations may decide to crack down on the use by Western intelligence agencies of their nation’s embassies to conduct espionage and electronic surveillance.

The cables did reveal that the United States puts a high priority on its diplomats gathering intelligence, including details of vehicles transporting government officials, operations of military installations, and the iris scans, fingerprints, and DNA of government officials. The collection of such human intelligence or “Humint,” coupled with the long-standing practice of the signals intelligence (“Sigint”) alliance of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to establish Special Collection Elements (SCEs) inside their embassies, drew attention to several “Dens of Espionage,” operating in various cities around the world. Such information is considered among the “crown jewels” of Western intelligence gathering -- signals intelligence product that is marked as “TOP SECRET//SI/REL TO USA, FVEY.”

US surveillance spies at embassies and consulates operate under official cover as Foreign Service officers, such as political and economic attachés, or as communications technicians with the Diplomatic Telecommunications Service. The SCEs have been augmented by Surveillance Detection Units (SDUs), located in at least 22 US embassies around the world. The SDUs monitor the activities of individuals and groups, deemed to be threats to the United States and maintain the gathered intelligence in the Security Incident Management System (SIMAS).

The State Department cable disclosure came very close to disclosing the FVEY operations at various embassies and diplomatic missions and the FVEY surveillance allies are playing hardball over the leaks.

The overreaction by Britain to the presence of Assange, who has been granted political asylum by Ecuador, in the Latin American nation’s London embassy stands to draw attention to the use of embassies for activities not compatible with their diplomatic status, actions that may result in declaring diplomats persona non grata.

The use of embassies for spying may also draw attention to the shipment of eavesdropping equipment to embassies by diplomatic pouch. This procedure was done for years by the US Air Force Special Activities Division in an operation, known as CREDIBLE CAT.

Surveillance equipment, sent through diplomatic pouches, was used to establish electronic surveillance units in Canadian embassies. Mike Frost once worked for Canada’s Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the US National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) FVEY partner. In his book, Spyworld, Frost described how the NSA and the CSE shipped monitoring equipment to Canadian embassies in Caracas (PROJECT ARTICHOLE), Bucharest (PROJECT HOLLYHOCK), Moscow (PROJECT SPHINX), Rabat (PROJECT IRIS), Beijing (PROJECT BADER), Abidjan (PROJECT JASMINE), Mexico City (PROJECT CORNFLOWER), New Delhi (PROJECT DAISY), and Kingston (PROJECT EGRET) as part of the overall operation, codenamed PROJECT PILGRIM. The US Moscow embassy’s operation was codenamed PROJECT BROADSIDE, the British embassy operation was PROJECT TRYST. Sweden’s embassy in Helsinki once monitored Soviet and Russian communications as part of the SIGDASYS network, which linked the English-language Five Eyes partners to NATO and non-NATO members’ Sigint collection activities. These intelligence relationships are at the heart of the collusion by Washington, London, Canberra, Ottawa, and Stockholm to rendition Assange to the United States by whatever means deemed necessary.

Through the NSA’s and the CIA’s joint Special Collection Service, foreign embassies, including the Egyptian embassy in Stockholm, have been covertly entered by the FVEY nations and the SIGDASYS partners like Sweden, Germany, and Israel to install bugs and steal cryptographic codes.

Like cornered wild animals about to be snared, the FVEY and SIGDASYS allies are fighting back. They are as determined to make an example of the cable leakers as they are dangerous in seeking retribution.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Theresa Carter doesn’t believe police claims that her son shot himself to death with his hands cuffed behind his back in a police cruiser.

She is hurting and wants to know what happened in the last moments of life for 21-year-old Chavis Carter, who died in the custody of Jonesboro, Ark., police after a traffic stop. A growing number of people also want the truth and others believe the young Black man was killed by police. The suicide story, they say, is ludicrous.

“I’m just heartbroken. I just want to know what really happened. ... My child was never suicidal. He would never kill himself. My son was full of joy, full of life, full of ambition,” Ms. Carter somberly yet emphatically told The Final Call in an exclusive interview.

There is a growing movement to get the truth about the death of Chavis Carter with Facebook pages calling for justice, an online petition and a prayer vigil scheduled for August 20 at the National Civil Rights Museum to press demands for justice and the story of what happened. At Final Call presstime, the Department of Justice was scheduled to hold a community forum at Greater Dimension Church, Jonesboro, Ark., on August 14.

Some five hours after the shooting, police said Chavis, who is left-handed, shot himself in the right temple after being searched twice, Ms. Carter said.

Her son’s father and two brothers are also having difficulty coping, she added. “A day don’t go by I don’t cry. I’m just trying to be strong and hold up. I just want justice served,” she added. The mother was resolute after a Sunday evening vigil Aug. 12 for her son in Tunica, Miss.

“It’s a case that begs to be looked at and we’re going to look and see if we can tell exactly what really happened that night,” said family attorney Russell Marlin of the Cochran Firm. The lawyer called the case one of the oddest police custody incidents he has ever looked at.

As answers are awaited, police don’t know when forensics results will be ready but have requested priority on the case, Chief Michael Yates said in an Aug. 10 e-mail to The Final Call. Without the results, the chief said no further information could be released.

Authorities say Chavis Carter and two men were stopped by Jonesboro police July 29 for driving erratically. Police allegedly found marijuana, small plastic bags and drug paraphernalia in the vehicle and on Mr. Carter, in the back seat. He was searched twice, arrested for an outstanding warrant and placed in a police car. The other two people involved, both of whom were White, were let go, officers said.

While officers were not looking, they say Mr. Carter shot himself with hands behind his back.

Two days after his burial, the Tunica NAACP hosted a prayer vigil Aug. 6 where friends of Chavis Carter waved posters that read, “Am I Next?” and “Justice for Chavis.” More rallies and vigils are planned, according to Kareem Ali, an activist and member of the Nation of Islam’s Study Group in South Haven, Mississippi.

The Carter family is asking the community to keep them in prayer, share what they know, and stay vigilant for the truth, according to Mr. Ali.

“I met the aunt of Chavis Carter and I consoled her as she was in tears. She said, ‘Ya’ll don’t stop fighting! Don’t stop fighting!’ It was the moment I knew that we had to help this family,” Mr. Ali said.

He is helping to organize the upcoming prayer vigil at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. Mr. Ali suggested the museum, the former Lorraine Hotel where Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered, as a good location for the mid-South.

Meanwhile a website to increase awareness about the case is in the works, a petition demanding justice has been launched on Change.org and a Justice for Chavis Carter Facebook page has been created.

Fear of a police cover-up

Shortly before the shooting, Mr. Carter called his cell phone, said Demetris Itson, his best friend. He regrets not picking up.

“I don’t know if he called to say, ‘Hey man, I’m in trouble,’ or ‘They’re fixing to do something to me.’ I don’t know what he wanted and that’s something that bothers me day in and day out,” Mr. Itson said.

He dismissed police claims his friend’s cell phone text messages showed Chavis Carter may have had a gun for use in a drug deal before the fatal incident. “I think it’s all crap because they’re just trying to cover themselves up. Chavis was nothing like that. He may have smoked a little marijuana here and there but it wasn’t an everyday thing. He wasn’t a drug abuser or dealer with guns. That’s preposterous! That’s not true,” he told The Final Call.

Young men go through a lot of trials in life but Chavis wasn’t going through anything so bad that he’d just kill himself, Mr. Itson said.

The two met in high school, where Chavis was a good friend and good hearted jokester, always laughing and smiling through life’s struggles, he continued.

Police Chief Yates stands by the suicide story, telling a major media outlet, “The average person who has never been in handcuffs, that never been around inmates or people in custody would react exactly the same way you just did: ‘How could that be possible?’ Well, fact of it is, it’s very possible. It’s quite easy.” The chief declined Final Call interview requests.

The police are padding, trying to introduce by innuendo the question or likelihood Mr. Carter had a gun, said an 18-year veteran police officer, who asked to remain anonymous. A crucial question is whether authorities ran gun powder residue tests on Mr. Carter and the officers, he said.

“If they did not, that’s criminal negligence on the part of a police agency but the likelihood he had a gun versus he had a gun is two different things,” the officer said.

The officer also questioned the text messages police say were sent, asking what were the date and time stamps and asked why police moved the gun.

A systemic, historical pattern

Friends talk often about police harassment for petty issues in Jonesboro, Mr. Itson said. “They pull you over for nonsense and they want to take you to jail for every little thing, like, in the Black community. I can just be pulling out of my friend’s driveway and police will claim it’s a drug transaction,” he said.

Mr. Carter’s shooting exemplifies a national trend of rogue officers ignoring police protocols, said Bishop Tavis Grant, national field director for the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, based in Chicago.

Black respect for and confidence in police across the South is at an all time low and tensions are at an all time high, including in Jonesboro, Bishop Grant said.

Tensions seen during the civil rights movement have resurfaced with Blacks fearful and officers in more militarized departments, he said.

Reports of Blacks being pulled over and frisked without probable cause or accused of speeding when driving below the limit have led Rainbow PUSH to seek Justice Department intervention, Bishop Grant said.

A federal probe could help defuse tension, which is likely to grow, he said. People drift to other measures when they don’t feel law enforcement represents their best interest, Bishop Grant said.

The destruction of property and rioting brought an arrest in the Rodney King Case, just as with Oscar Grant, said Cephus Johnson, whose nephew was fatally shot in the back by a transit officer on January 1, 2009. He was lying face down, restrained by two officers with his hands behind his back. His death resulted in the first time a peace officer in California stood trial and was convicted for killing someone in the line of duty.

“It just goes to show it just can’t be a family crying and hoping the Department of Justice or police department is actually going to arrest this officer. It’s just not going to happen,” Mr. Johnson said.

National problem of police violence?

“This pattern is being painted along with a portrait across the country that in particular African American males are violent. They are suspect. They are subject to a lower threshold as relates to credibility, integrity and truthfulness, and it’s just unconscionable for this young brother to be killed, handcuffed, and now for it to be alleged that he had a handgun,” Bishop Grant said.

The Chavis Carter shooting comes in a long line, which includes Trayvon Martin, shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Fla., and Rakia Boyd, killed by an off-duty officer in Chicago, Illinois, said Dr. Ruby Sales, a civil rights movement veteran and founder of the SpiritHouse Project. The SpiritHouse Project is a Georgia-based, national non-profit organization that advocates racial, economic and social justice through arts, research, education and action.

Police are being used as a means of social control to keep Blacks in their places and maintain White domination, Dr. Sales said.

Tactics used during segregation have resurfaced, such as in the case of Billey Joe Johnson, Jr., who died under similar suspicious circumstances in Lucedale, Miss. three years ago, she said. The Black star athlete was destined for college at 17 but during a traffic stop, shot himself in the head with a shotgun, according to police.

No charges were filed against the deputy involved but his parents insist he had been weighing recruitment letters before committing to Auburn, and did not commit suicide.

Police feel free to circulate outlandish stories and rationales because Blacks have been complacent, said Dr. Sales.

“We’ve accepted these things and we get into debating characters of people rather than the justice issue and the act of police terrorism and murder,” she continued.

Since Blacks believe they are inferior, the environment is fertile for these kinds of murders, she told The Final Call.

Whites reconsolidated power 50 years after every freedom movement in America, said Dr. Sales. It happened after Black Reconstruction, the turn of America into segregation, at the end of the abolitionist movement and after the Black resistance movement in the South, she noted.

“White people never gave up their vision of White supremacy; they just put in place laws that would keep Black people in our places. We were so high on freedom and the delusions of freedom that we for a moment let down our guards and the next thing we knew we were in it,” said Dr. Sales.

“People believed the rhetoric, that we had reached freedom land and there was no more work to do. Women stopped doing race work. Scholars began teaching in White schools and left Black schools unattended.”

Now is an opportunity for the Black community to renew common connections and draw on cultural resources that allowed survival under segregation and Blacks kept their dignity, Dr. Sales added.

Police brutality and police murders date back to America’s murder of slaves, said Carl Dix, co-founder of the October 22 Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation, a New York-based group which works to expose police brutality. Lynch mobs took on the murderous role after slavery and recently the police have, he said.

Law enforcement killed 2,000 people in the 1990s alone, 80 percent of them unarmed Blacks and Latinos, the October 22 Coalition reported. The numbers stem from research by grassroots organizations, not governmental agencies, federal police nor city agencies, Mr. Dix said.

Far too often, the police get off if they’re even charged and all too often, they’re not charged, he noted. And victims weren’t doing anything that could be considered even remotely illegal, Mr. Dix said.

Law enforcement’s excuse would be they mistook keys, cell phones, cigarette lighters or candy bars for a gun but the Carter shooting is especially outrageous because officers claim he pointed a gun to his head while handcuffed behind his back, Mr. Dix continued.

“Everybody who heard that should put their hands behind their back, try to lift their arms and try to figure out from that position how they could put their hand up to their head,” he said.

And supposing Mr. Carter did manage to put his hand up to his head, where did the gun come from? he asked. “But that’s how bold and in our face law enforcement is with what they do to us,” Mr. Dix said.

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